TEACHING GUITAR WORKSHOPS

Clinicians

Glen McCarthy, chair

For over 20 years, Glen McCarthy has taught guitar pedagogy and class guitar required for all music education majors at George Mason University. He has been a guest clinician and adjudicator at numerous festivals, conferences and workshops both nationally and internationally. He is the executive director and a clinician for Teaching Guitar Workshops, past-chair of the NAfME Council for Guitar Education, and the past-chair of the ASTA Guitar-in-the-Schools Committee and past-chair of the All-Virginia Guitar Ensemble.

Glen retired from Fairfax County Public Schools after 30 years at Robinson Secondary School where he developed a multi-level guitar program. Robinson was the first recipient of the Guitar & Accessories Marketing Association’s award to recognize innovative guitar programming in the United States. Under his direction, the Robinson Guitar Ensemble performed in numerous venues and was consistently awarded superior ratings at adjudicated festivals.

In 2014 from over 32,000 nominees the Grammy Foundation recognized Glen as one of the top ten music educators in the United States. He continues to perform in numerous venues and genres.

Traci Bolton

Traci Bolton has been a music educator in Missouri since 1997, holding Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Education.

Traci has been working for over a decade to bring guitar experiences and quality education to the St. Louis County region. These include a classical ensemble with a dedicated solo and ensemble festival as well as a full rock show with lights and sound. These venues often feature original student composition and arrangements. On a national level, Traci has served on the National Association for Music Education Council for Guitar Education and the American String Teachers Association Guitar Task Force. Traci serves as a clinician at the district and state level helping teachers deliver quality guitar education.

Shelley Brobst

Shelley Brobst, M.Ed. has been a classroom guitar instructor for over 15 years. She has taught in elementary, middle and high school setting. She was trained as a classical guitarist and has earned both her Bachelor’s of Music Education and Master’s in Educational Leadership. She has been an instructor with TGW since 2006.

Currently Shelley teaches general elementary music and has an after-school guitar club for beginners in an international school in the Netherlands. You can find her articles “Teaching Guitar – A Classroom Diary” about this experience on NAfME Teaching Guitar webpage. Shelley serves on the Guitar Committee of the Fine Arts Cohort for Dodea. Shelley also taught band, choir and orchestra in Nevada, Arizona and England. As a performer she has played with the Las Vegas Classical Guitar Ensemble, The Cambridge Guitar Orchestra, The Stitching Guitarorkest Netherlands and currently with the Aachen Guitar Orchestra, Germany.

Bill Burke

Bill Burke learned early in his playing career that he also liked to teach. “When I taught my friends a few chords and songs, then it doubled the fun and freed me to solo and create other parts.” Soon after, Bill taught his first group guitar class at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in Cambridge, Massachusetts and found his calling, while continuing to perform at home and on the road. With bachelor’s degrees in Music and Psychology, and a master’s degree in Teaching and Education, he is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Utah State University, Grove School of Music, and George Mason University.

Bill serves as Director of Guitar Studies, Performing Arts Department Chair, and as a member of the Instructional Leadership Team at Centreville High School in Fairfax County, Virginia. He began the guitar program in 1999 and has grown and maintained a full four-year program since. Bill was part of the three-person team who wrote the Program of Studies in Guitar for Fairfax County Public Schools. Using his classroom as a laboratory, he presented his academic research on ‘Teaching Reading to Guitar 1 Students’ at a World Education conference in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Since 1995, he has been an adjunct professor of music at the College of Southern Maryland. He is the resident guitar instructor at Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts at the Center for Education. Bill continues to teach private lessons and community classes and has been with Teaching Guitar Workshops since 2007. An active performer and composer, he has released two solo albums in recent years of original compositions on which he played all the instruments: December Skies and Shelter No.3 available from CD Baby, iTunes, Amazon etc. He is currently working on his next release.

Dr. Julie Goldberg

Named Guitarist of the year by Classical Guitar Alive, internationally-broadcast radio program, Julie Goldberg is the first guitarist to receive a Doctorate in Music Performance from Northwestern University, and holds degrees from the Chicago Musical College, and College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati. Julie has performed solo recitals in New York, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Michigan and Washington, D.C. and has been featured on the internationally known Dame Myra Hess Concert Series.

Dr. Goldberg has a passion for music education and is on the faculty of North Park University and VanderCook College of Music in Chicago. She is a guest artist at the Interlochen Music Academy, CCM Summer Guitar Workshop, Wisconsin Center for Music Education, Illinois Music Education Association, Mid-America Guitar Ensemble Festival and Michigan Music Conference. Over seas she has taught master-classes at the Vietnam National Academy of Music, Hanoi and the Ho Chi Minh City Conservatory of Music. She recently co-authored the book 100 Classical Guitar Lessons, which is published by Hal Leonard. Dr. Goldberg writes a monthly blog on guitar education for the D’addario Education Collective and performs regularly with the Avant Guitar Trio.

Steve Krenz

Steve holds a Bachelor in Music from the University of Texas at San Antonio. As a professional guitarist in Nashville, Steve has played guitar in the studio and live with numerous Grammy and Dove winning artists including Robben Ford, Donna Summer, Bryan White, Michael W. Smith, Darlene Zschech and Hillsong, the Fifth Dimension, Phil Keaggy, Israel Houghton, American Idol finalist Melinda Dolittle and many others.

As an life-long educator, Steve has been a featured guitar instructor at Gibson.com. As founder of GuitarGathering.com, his weekly streaming broadcasts with world-renowned guitarists serve an online YouTube audience of 18000+ subscribers with over 2.8 million views. His guitar instruction course, Gibson’s Learn & Master Guitar, won the Acoustic Guitar Magazine’s Players Choice Award for Best Instructional Material. This and his multiple other guitar instructional courses represent global sales of over 100000+ units with 10 million dollars in sales worldwide online and retail sales through Hal Leonard.

Steve’s summer Guitar Gathering conference is listed as one of the nation’s “Best Guitar Camps” by Acoustic Guitar Magazine.

Steve lives in Nashville, Tennessee and, along with playing and recording, serves as a guitar professor at Trevecca University in Nashville – teaching acoustic and classical guitar, guitar classes and the guitar ensemble.

Bob Morris

Bob Morris holds the Master of Music degree in Music Theory and the Bachelor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Oklahoma. In 1996 Bob launched a classroom guitar program for the Clark County School District (Las Vegas, Nevada) – a program that eventually grew to be one of the largest in the country. His pilot program, which had over 150 beginning students in its first year, has since expanded to many other schools in the district, and is now considered a model for many programs nationwide.

Dr. Rob Pethel

Dr. Rob Pethel is a musician, educator, and researcher based in Atlanta, Georgia. He earned a B.Mus. with a concentration in classical guitar under John Sutherland in 2002 from Georgia State University (GSU). Rob’s graduate work [M.Ed., Auburn University (2010) – Ph.D., GSU, (2016)] researched guitar education, pedagogy, ethnomusicology, and public education.

In 2008, Rob initiated a classroom guitar program in the Atlanta Public School district, where he continues to teach. In addition to secondary education, he has also taught undergraduate courses at GSU in guitar and general music. Rob is active as a clinician and teaches workshops on the national, state, and local levels.

Ed Prasse

Edward Prasse holds the MME and BME degrees from the Florida State University College of Music. He currently heads the four-year guitar program at Leon High School in Tallahassee, Florida, which annually serves over 200 students across four levels of instruction. The program culminates in the auditioned performing guitar ensemble “Frets”, who has performed for the Governor of Florida, Justices of the Florida Supreme Court, the FMEA conference, and many numerous community and school performances. The Leon High Guitar program is driven by a multi-style approach studying all genres “from Bach to Rock”. Ed is currently the General Music Committee Chairperson of the FMEA Executive board, which has developed a series of guitar-focused events within Florida including a state-wide ensemble festival, an All-State Guitar event, and a track of guitar-related sessions at the FMEA clinic/conference. Additionally, Ed is a partner, co-author, and editor for the publishing company Class Guitar Resources, Inc. He is an active presenter/clinician for various state MEAs, and district training workshops. Ed is the proud parent of three children and in his spare time (what is that any more?), enjoys playing golf, grilling great food, a bit of sleep, and PLAYING GUITAR!!

Bill Purse

Bill Purse is a full professor, chair of the guitar and music technology departments at Duquesne University (Pittsburgh), where he was instrumental in the development of two new majors: the undergraduate music technology degree and graduate music technology degree programs. Purse received his bachelor of music and master of music at Duquesne University. Purse has received Duquesne University’s 1996 Presidents award for excellence in scholarship and a 2001 Lifetime Achievement Award for guitar pedagogy and performance. He is an honored member of the Lexington Who’s Who and received a Senate of Pennsylvania 2002 Citation for his guitar and education leadership. He was initiated into the Duquesne University Office of Research Hall of Fame in 2008.

Purse is the chair emeritus of the NAfME/NAMM/GAMA (National Association for Music Educators / National Association of Music Merchants / Guitar and Accessories Marketing Association) Guitar Education Team where he served as chair three time since 1995. Teaching Guitar Workshops and the Guitar Education Team were created to revitalize the guitar in music education, and these very successful Teaching guitar workshops have retrained more than 3,200 teachers, who in turn have taught more than 980,000 young guitarists.

Purse has written several books for the Alfred Publishing: co-writing Alfred’s Sound Innovations Guitar Method Level 1 and Level 2 and Teacher Editions SI Level 1 and Level 2 with Aaron Stang. Warner Brothers and Belwin Ultimate Beginner Tech Start Series(tm): Home Recording Basics, Belwin’s 21st Century Guitar Ensemble Arrangements for Europa and Classical Gas. Purse also has a new publication for Alfred, The Finale 2014 Primer, available this summer.

Scott Seifried

Scott Seifried has been teaching guitar at James W. Robinson Jr. Secondary School in Fairfax County, Virginia, since 1991. Under his direction, the Robinson Guitar Ensemble has performed throughout the United States, including invitational performances at the American String Teachers Association (ASTA) National Convention and the Guitar Foundation of America (GFA) International Competition and Convention.

He is the author of The Guitar Workbook: A Fresh Approach to Exploration and Mastery, published by Oxford University Press, which is an invaluable resource for class guitar instruction. He is actively involved in research concerning classroom guitar, and has published several articles in peer-reviewed professional publications, including the International Journal of Music Education and American String Teacher.

Scott was a contributor to the National Core Arts Standards for Harmonizing Instruments, and co-wrote the Fairfax County Public Schools Program of Studies for Guitar. He is a former a member of the ASTA National Guitar in the Schools Committee, and also a former member of the National Association for Music Education (NAfME) Council for Guitar Education. Additionally, he is member of the Guitar & Accessories Marketer’s Association (GAMA) Teaching Guitar Workshop Guitar Education Team.

Scott received his BFA in Classical Guitar Performance from Carnegie Mellon University; he also holds a Master of Music from James Madison University and a PhD in Education Research from George Mason University.